Some of the designers who made it happen

Macy 99 is quite different to the other designers in that his very first submission is of a very high quality - almost good enough to win straight off. He has won 3 of our competitions so far.

- Eric2050

Finalist
- WOWmaker

WOWmaker made the design process easy. He needed little direction and was one of those designers who "got it" the first time. His use of typography, layout, and general design is hard to come by these days. Everyone thinks they are a designer, but few can understand how elements and type work together to form a cohesive, meaningful design that isn't fraught with amateur approaches and learn-as-you-go design work. His design was the first submitted, and it withstood some tough competition. I don't have time for juniors, I need experts. WOWmaker is an expert. Oh and another thing -- not a single misspelling in the design. This shows a command of the English language and an attention to detail. Overall, great designer with amazing speed and a willingness to get it right!

- Anonymous

How Eric2050 started their icon or button journey

Organization name

Acclaim Software Ltd

Tell us a bit about who you are and the people you reach

Fast Backup is a Windows program which is designed to copy data quickly to a removable drive (or another hard disk or computer).

What industry do you think your business is most related to?

Computer

What inspires you and how do you envision the design for your business?

We need all the icons to have three versions:-
1) The normal icon
2) The "On Hover" icon (for when the mouse goes over it)
3) The "disabled" icon (in gray - when it is not valid to click it)

The "On Hover" icon could just have a subtle border around it when the user moves their mouse over it (or anything else).

Please also make a graphic for the Nag Screen. This is our "Selling" screen and where we need to encourage the user to upgrade to the Pro Version. We want it to look good. Please include selling words and graphics. We expect that most users will be using our software with removable drives (removable hard drives or USB sticks) so it might be good to include one or both of them. You can have lightning bolts or rockets to indicate speed.

We have included the screenshots of the Main Screen and the Nag Screen. There are four extra buttons we need for a cousin of this application.

There are icons to adjust the speed. The speeds are 100%. 75%, 50% and 25%. The user can increase or decrease the speed while it is running. It is neccessary because at 100% the computer (and network) could slow down to a crawl if you try to do anything else while the backup is running. You could make it into a widget of some kind - maybe a spin control or something - http://i.msdn.microsoft.com/dynimg/IC38910.png

You could also try fiddling around with the background and font colors. Should the Current Activity window be a green font on top of a very light green background (to indicate success). Should the Errors / Warnings window be a red font on top of a very light red window (to indicate problems). Should the Errors / Warnings window be green when empty but turn red when there is a problem. The website has a blue color scheme, so that might clash with red and green. The app can have a different color scheme if neccessary.